Volume 2: Consciousness-Based Education

Christopher Jones, Ph.D., Volume Editor

Softcover, 472 pp.

Published in 2012

Teaching and learning may occur in classrooms or other physical settings, but fundamentally all teaching and learning takes place in consciousness. And as every teacher appreciates, teaching and learning can be successful only to the degree students’ consciousness is receptive, alert, and awake.

Maharishi Vedic Science, the cornerstone of Consciousness-Based Education, is the discipline that studies the full range of human consciousness. It also provides simple, systematic, scientifically validated techniques for developing the full potential of consciousness. As such, it offers unprecedented benefits to education.

Developing consciousness—The core technology of Maharishi Vedic Science is the Transcendental Meditation technique, a simple, natural, effortless procedure practiced 20 minutes twice daily. Practice of this technique integrates brain functioning, reduces stress and anxiety, and increases creativity, intelligence, field independence, moral maturity, and ego development, as well as improving learning ability and academic performance. These are striking results, for many of these values level off in adolescence and have not been known to increase thereafter. With more than 600 scientific research studies detailing the wide-ranging benefits of this technique, no approach to education has such an extensive body of empirical support.

Understanding consciousness—Consciousness-Based Education also provides a simple but profound understanding of the fundamental principles and dynamics of consciousness. All human knowledge is the expression of consciousness. If students and teachers understand the basic principles of consciousness, they simultaneously understand the basic principles of all disciplines of knowledge. Here is the unified framework for all knowledge that philosophers and academicians have desired for decades.

This science and technology of consciousness can be applied at every level of instruction, from kindergarten through PhD, from academic settings to on-the-job training. In fact, this approach to education has been applied in schools throughout the US and around the world, with unprecedented results, and verges on becoming a standard part of education.

Maharishi Vedic Science was developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, drawing from the most ancient continuous tradition of knowledge in the world, the Vedic tradition of India. The articles in this volume explore a Consciousness-Based approach to education from a variety of perspectives.